Associate Professor Dr Robert Sharp

is the principle investigator for the Giant Magellan Telescope Integral Field Spectrograph program at the Australian National University. Since completing his PhD - on the identification of high redshift quasar, at the University of Cambridge in 2002 - Rob has worked extensively with integral field and fibre-optic multi-object spectroscopy. When not developing the GMTIFS concept, he is also leading the analysis of observations for the multi-object integral-field SAMI galaxy survey and quasar reverberation mapping (to measure mass of black holes) as part of the Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES).

Rob will give an overview of some of the novel new instruments for astronomy being built at Mount Stromlo Observatory, and hopefully explain a little about what Integral Field Spectroscopy is.